January 13, 2021
“Why dost thou make me see wrongs and look upon trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. Habakkuk 1:3-5
Sounds like it could have been written today, right? Nope, about 2,700 years ago. And still, we are searching for the answer to why God allows bad stuff to occur. Still! Howard Thurman, in his book Meditations of the Heart, takes a good swing at an answer, maybe the best I have seen – at least it settled well within me.
He writes: “All events in life take place, somehow, within the divine context.” The “somehow” there is at the center of the “why bad things happen” question. That is, I seek to understand why they happen, why God allows them to happen. I seek to understand. Thurman notes that we need to develop “the profound confidence that a structure of moral integrity undergirds all of life; that such a structure is basic to the totality of all experience. Things do not happen merely; they are part of some kind of rationale. If this can be tracked down and understood, then the living experience, however terrible, makes sense.”
There is the key, in that last sentence, I want to track down and understand things, to know what happened and why it happened. The problem is, damn it, that I am just not that smart. I can track down the facts, understand and figure out some things, but only some things. Here is where Thurman works his magic.
“Even though one is never able to accomplish this tracking down, one cannot destroy the confidence that the logic of all ills is knowable. A man traces them down as far as he can, until, at last, he seeks no longer to understand the ills but rather to understand God’s understanding.” Lacking this, he rests himself in the assurance of God’s Presence in him and in life about him. He sees the travail of his own would and is satisfied.”
Indeed, satisfied.
It occurs to me... 